The United States Postal Service (USPS) lost much of its package business in the period since 1970 to competitors like United Parcel Service (UPS), Federal Express and DHL. Currently, the US Postal Service holds less than a 10% market share of all domestic package shipments. There are a number of reasons for this staggering shift in the marketplace but one major factor was that USPS competitors offered package tracking. Federal Express was a pioneer in this arena—the first to provide a package label with integral barcode that is applied by the shipper. When the package is transferred to Federal Express care, an “acceptance scan” of the barcode is performed. Data from this scan event flows to a centralized computer system and records the date and time of acceptance, the location where the package was accepted, and the package ID as evidenced by the barcode representation.
During the delivery cycle, the package is scanned at various distribution points and the associated data is sent to a centralized computer system. At delivery, a final delivery scan is undertaken and sometimes a recipient signature and/or name are captured. This data is similarly transferred to a centralized computer system.
The net result is that the package path may be traced from the point the shipper gives over possession to the carrier, through the entire shipping cycle, and to the final destination. This information was initially made available via call centers and later migrated to Web-based information systems. Now it is a standard practice for shippers and their customers to check on the status of their packages during the delivery cycle.
In the early 1990's—nearly a decade after Federal Express started—the USPS finally introduced a tracked package service called Express Mail. But by that time Federal Express, UPS and others had captured the bulk of the overnight and expedited package delivery market. Additionally, the USPS tracking system was not as sophisticated as its competitors and its delivery performance also lagged behind the industry.
In the mid to late 1990's, package carriers began to offer tracking on lower priority packages which traveled by surface transportation. While slower, “ground services” were attractively priced and still offered a complete tracking from the shipper to the recipient. FedEx, UPS and others further penetrated this market by offering easier methods to create shipping labels—moving from multi-part forms which required manual entry to computer- and Web-generated shipping labels. Multi-part carbon-form labels were supplanted by single ply computer generated labels which could be quickly and easily produced by the shipper.
In fairness, one should note that the extensive focus on package ID's and acceptance scans by USPS's competitors was largely derived by the need to bill the shipper for transportation services. The acceptance scan captured critical information needed for invoicing and payment processes. The US Postal Service, in contrast, is largely a “pay in advance” business model where many shippers apply postage of some form (stamps, postage meter strips, PC postage) before inducting the mail. Because of this, it has not nearly as critical for the USPS to identify and track each and every package it accepts.
But from a customer perspective today, tracking is a de facto requirement. Medium and high volume shippers want some publicly-available indication that they both fulfilled a customer's order and handed that order over to a shipping agent. The package recipients want an independent confirmation of the same event.
Currently the USPS offers a “Track/Confirm Services.” The wording has been carefully, chosen because only one domestic USPS service offers true tracking—Express Mail. Express Mail is scanned at acceptance when the piece is transferred from the shipper to the USPS, is scanned at intermediate processing points, and is finally scanned at the destination. But Express Mail is expensive and only justified if one needs an overnight or 2 day delivery cycle.
The vast major of packages handled by the USPS instead use a service called “Delivery Confirmation” which was first offered in the late 1990's. There are two versions of Delivery Confirmation—a retail counter version costing on the order of 55 cents (over and above the postage), and an “electronic” version, which is either free or 13 cents (depending upon the class of mail). The key feature of Delivery Confirmation is that the US Postal Service guarantees that the only delivery event will be recorded. That is, the date, time, and delivery ZIP5 of the delivery event will be provided by contacting a USPS call center or visiting the USPS Web site.
Examples of labels 10 with Express Mail tracking and electronic delivery confirmation are shown in FIG. 1. These examples 10 include a relatively new postage evidencing system called IBI 20 (Information Based Indicia) or PC postage, which not only may evidence a valid postage, but also information about the sender, and the particular postage transaction.
It should be noted that a similar service is available called signature confirmation. Once again, only the delivery event is memorialized, but in addition to the date, time and ZIP5 of the delivery, the USPS will also capture a signature of the recipient. The cost of the “electronic” version of this service is $1.25 over and above the normal postage charge.
The two versions of delivery confirmation—retail and electronic—deserve clarification. The retail version is designed for a customer who presents one or several packages at a USPS Post Office facility. The customer will pay for the required postage and optionally be offered a delivery confirmation service for roughly 55 cents more. If the customer opts for this feature, the USPS retail clerk will remove a preprinted delivery confirmation barcode sticker 30, having a barcode 35, such as that depicted in FIG. 2, from a book of such stickers and affix it to the package.
The retail clerk will then scan the delivery confirmation barcode 35 and enter the destination ZIP5 of the package into his/her computer terminal. These two pieces of information (delivery confirmation number and destination ZIP5) flow up to a USPS centralized package tracking system (not shown) along with the date and time of acceptance and the location of the origin Post Office. This is truly an “acceptance scan”, but the USPS still does not represent the process as “tracking” because they cannot guarantee any intermediate scans of the package as it traverses from origin to destination.
The other version of delivery confirmation—“electronic”—is favored by computer-savvy shippers and volume shippers. A major advantage is that the USPS pricing for this electronic service is either free (for Priority Mail) or 13 cents (for First Class, Parcel Post, and Media Mail) rather than 55 cents. Second, the delivery confirmation barcode, e.g., 35, can be issued via low-cost “electronic” means rather than via a costly face-to-face retail transaction. Thirdly, the shipper can avoid waiting in line at the Post Office and instead induct his/her packages in a variety of other less time-consuming ways. The labels 10 in FIG. 1 are examples of computer generated “electronic” delivery confirmation and tracking technologies, such as a confirmation barcode 25.
Delivery confirmation numbers are typically 16 digits in length, although the barcode 25 itself generally represents 22 characters. The USPS has settled on a protocol whereby the first digits of the delivery confirmation number are comprised of the Dun and Bradstreet (“Duns”) number of some business entity. The precise specifications are presented below:
(1) Application Identifier (AI): two characters; identifies the article as a Delivery Confirmation piece,
(2) Service Type Code (STC): two characters; identifies the type of product or service used for each item,
(3) Customer ID: nine characters; DUNS® number that uniquely identifies the customer,
(4) Package Sequence Number (PSN): eight characters; fixed sequential number, and
(5) Modulus 10 Check digit: one character.
High volume package shipper can create or purchase a “manifesting” system (generally priced between $2000 and $60,000) which generates unique delivery confirmation numbers at the shipper's site based on the shipper's Duns number followed by a unique ascending number. At the end of the shipping day, the manifesting system transmits all of the delivery confirmation numbers issued (along with the associated delivery address, package weight and mail class data) to the USPS product tracking system (“PTS”) computer using an file transfer protocol (“FTP”)-type process. The manifesting system utilizes a permit indicium on the shipping label 10 which is linked to the shipper's prepaid USPS account.
The shipper must bring his packages to a Business Mail Entry section of a Main Post Office for acceptance and presentation of the billing paperwork. The “manifest” is a detailed listing of each package, its destination, weight and mail class. The appropriate postage-due for each package is included in the manifest and totaled for the entire shipment. The USPS Bulk Mail Acceptance clerk reviews this documentation, spot checks the physical packages, and then deducts the grand total of postage due from the shipper's USPS account.
One element of paperwork produced by the manifesting system is an acceptance scan form 40, an example of which is shown in FIG. 3. The form 40 includes a barcode 45 that represents a unique number assigned to all of the tracking data uploaded by the shipper that day via the FTP process. The USPS clerk at the Business Mail Entry section will scan this barcode 45. When the associated scan data reaches the USPS PTS computer, it is merged with the data previously transferred by FTP and marks each of the individual packages as “accepted” with a specific date/time and location.
The high volume shipper thus has two key points of information available for public view. First, there is the record of transferring the package to the USPS (at the Business Mail Entry site). Second is the delivery event as recorded by the USPS mail carrier at the destination. One significant problem with manifesting is that it is available only to shippers with adequate financial resources, requires presentation of the packages at the USPS Business Mail Entry site (typically the back dock of the Main Post Office), has a daily minimum of 50 lbs, and requires that the shipper make his operations available for unannounced inspections by the US Postal Service.
The retail counter delivery confirmation process is too expensive and time consuming for even a small business shipper. And yet few shippers are large enough to justify buying a $2000-$60,000 manifesting system to support delivery confirmation—particularly when no such investment is required for UPS or FedEx shipping. UPS and FedEx shipping tools are provided free or charge and are very easy to use.
In order to partially address this problem, the USPS created a Web application program interface (“API”) called Webtools. The Webtools system is simply an intermediate computer server which has two basic functions:
1. Issue unique delivery confirmation numbers in real-time in response to authenticated XML internet requests from a variety of shippers.
2. Upload a daily file to the USPS PTS system describing all delivery confirmation issued that day along with the associated package information.
In essence, Webtools acts like a free, centralized manifesting system. The XML query must contain the complete delivery address for the package, the weight of the package, the class of mail and other elements identifying the shipper. If all data elements meet the relevant error checks, the Webtools system issues an XML response with a unique delivery confirmation number. The numbers issued in this way all have a leading set of numbers which are based on a USPS-affiliated Dun and Bradstreet number.
This service was enthusiastically received by many software developers as a means to create shipping labels 10 like those shown in FIG. 1 without having to burden the end-user shipper with expensive systems and complex FTP end-day processes.
While this process has been adopted for use by many shipping tools (e.g., Endicia Internet Postage, the USPS Click-and-Ship Web site, and the EBay/Paypal Shipping Label system) it has one major drawback—the lack of an acceptance scan. USPS based it's costing for electronic delivery confirmation (free or 13 cents) on the premise that a) there would be one scan per day for major manifesting shippers representing the hundreds or thousands of packages inducted or b) no acceptance scan for non-manifesting customers.
The USPS stance of prohibiting acceptance scans of labels bearing electronic delivery confirmation is published as national policy. While USPS carrier scan guns can indeed perform this type of scan from a technical perspective, from a cost and labor perspective they are prohibited from doing so. The USPS has somewhat limited flexibility in such issues because all USPS cost structures go through a public review process involving the Postal Rates Commission. The USPS presents so-called “rate-cases” to the Postal Rate Commission and this case presents proposed new rates and the detailed cost justifications for the rates. Once a rate case is accepted and approved by the Postal Rates Commission and the USPS, the rate structure is locked until the next rate case is approved. The cycle for a typical rate case is 2 years and it involves comments and critiques from the public, the mailing industry, and very significantly, USPS competitors like UPS and FedEx.
In the last rate case, the USPS argued for free (or 13 cent) electronic delivery confirmation and a 55 cent retail delivery confirmation charge, on the premise that the retail interaction required measurable labor to sell the feature, collect finds, apply the sticker, scan the barcode and enter the destination ZIP5 into the retail computer manually. For electronic delivery confirmation, no face-to-face transaction was envisioned and all data regarding the package and its destination flowed via computer networks from the shipper's site to the USPS PTS. The USPS rate makers incorrectly assumed that an acceptance scan was not desired.
The result is that there are legions of USPS package shippers using delivery confirmation which have no public record confirming that the package was indeed transferred to the USPS. While the event of data receipt is duly recorded, the phrasing on the USPS Track/Confirm Web site is vague: “The US Postal Services has been electronically notified by the shipper or the shipper's agent on Jun. 4, 2004 to expect your package for mailing.”
This essentially means that a shipping label has been printed—it does not indicate if the shipper actually transferred the package to the USPS or if it is still sitting in his shipping room. This situation can be unnerving in some commercial situations. For example, an EBay auction typically unites a buyer and seller who have never interacted before and will never see one another personally. The seller has an incentive to ship quickly after the close of the auction so that his “feedback rating” does not suffer due to a disgruntled buyer. The electronic delivery confirmation generated by the EBay system simply tells the world when the seller printed the label from the EBay site. But without an acceptance scan, no one knows when the seller actually placed the package in the mail stream.
Accordingly, improved systems and methods for recording the acceptance of a package by a postal carrier are needed.